A Certain Uncertainty

Mark P. Silverman is the G. A. Jarvis Professor of Physics at Trinity College, Connecticut. He received his PhD in Chemical Physics from Harvard University, and has since pursued a wide range of experimental and theoretical studies concerning the structure of matter, the behavior of light, and the dynamics of stars and galaxies.

• 1. Tools of the trade; 2. The 'fundamental problem' of a practical physicist; 3. Mother of all randomness I: the random disintegration of matter; 4. Mother of all randomness II: the random creation of light; 5. A certain uncertainty; 6. Doing the numbers: nuclear physics and the stock market; 7. On target: uncertainties of projectile flight; 8. The guesses of groups; 9. The random flow of energy I: power to the people; 10. The random flow of energy II: warning from the weather underground; Index.

'For physicists, it has long been integral to our science to ascribe an uncertainty to every data point, to every inference, to every theory. That is, a measurement is regarded as meaningless without assigning an 'error bar' to it. This delightful book by Mark Silverman shows the reader how a physicist does this with the 'tools of his trade'; namely mathematical analysis, starting with Bayes' theorem, Poissonian and Gaussian statistics, and progressing through Shannon's information formulation of entropy. This book is mathematically complete, but not intense, making it intellectually stimulating, with conclusions that are sometimes surprising. I recommend it with considerable enthusiasm.' Samuel A. Werner, University of Missouri